For an applicant who isn’t eligible for any need based aid or merit scholarship, which top 25 college is cheapest? If anyone ever did the math, please share your results.
UCLA. At least if you live in CA. It’s cheaper than Cal. And slightly less than UVA in-state ($3000 less in tuition and fees and the cost of room and board at UCLA is less than stated since everyone ends up in a triple and the COA assumes a double room).
Of course in practice you are exceedingly unlikely to be in state for both UCLA and UVA, so that’s not a realistic comparison.
But if you are out of state for both, I think the answer is still UCLA since none of the privates come in below $60K pa (with the sole exception of Cornell’s state contract colleges for New Yorkers) which is the actual UCLA OOS cost for a triple and UVA has a higher OOS supplement.
Not a resident of CA or VA and looking for private schools so in-state tuition wouldn’t matter.
Ivies, Amherst, Williams, Pomona, MIT, U Chicago, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, Caltech, Stanford, Johns Hopkins.
You need to start a spreadsheet, go to the website of each school you’re interested in, and populate the spreadsheet. This data is easily knowable.
If there is a difference in costs at those schools, it might be a few thousand. Once you are payig $70k per year, does it really matter if one is $69 and another is $72?
Rice
I believe @cptofthehouse is right. That said, a spreadsheet that best compares apples to apples is a good approach.
Not eligible for any merit aid even at those few top 25 schools where it is offered? I’d be asking about chances for acceptance, because admissions is very competitive.
Every student who completes a FAFSA can take the Direct Loan. So for freshman year…that’s $5500.
Just look at the full cost of attendance on the websites all the Ivies, Amherst, Williams, Pomona, MIT, U Chicago, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, Caltech, Stanford, Johns Hopkin and subtract $5500 student loan. That’s the cost someone without merit or need based aid will be paying out of pocket.
Not sure anyone else here needs to do these calculations for you. Just look at the those schools of interest…and look at their full cost to attend…minus $5500.
I’m not asking for anyone to do calculations for me, just requesting if someone else has already done it or seen a link to a cost comparison list without aid, loan or scholarship deduction.
Most lists you see in news articles preemptively factor in every deduction and are sort of confusing as everyone has different deductions so while we have no shortage of random lists about colleges, another list with pure pre-deduction costs isn’t going to increase global warming.
When you start looking at the schools other than Rice, they do tend to cluster in the $70k range, and other factors start coming into play such as off campus housing costs, travel expenses.
@riversider When last I checked a few years ago, Princeton was the least expensive Ivy at full pay.
When looking at the total cost of attendance, there’s over a $10K difference between Rice and most of the other top universities. My daughter didn’t just look at top 25 and didn’t consider all of them a fit, so her spreadsheet isn’t complete and there may be some other outliers.
JHU went to no undergraduate student loans in their packages this year.
Without merit or need based aid there isn’t going to be a huge difference in COA for the schools you listed above. What may vary would be travel and just general cost of living (ie. Chicago being a more expensive city than say Amherst).
May be if some articles brought it up for a national discussion, high COA can be evaluated. No one seems to know real COA of colleges and they are increasing it at a much higher level than incomes can accommodate for.
It should help families of all EFCs.
If some of these college save $50K or more, it’s a good enough factor for any high EFC family scrapping every dollar of their savings to be able to afford one of the these colleges. They can show more love to these colleges or try EA or ED there. It’s like having one year of an elite education given to you for free.
If you go by the US News national university list, UCLA has the lowest out of state tuition among the top 25 at around $41,000. UNC Chapel Hill is the only top 30 school with out of state tuition below $40,000. If you expand the list to top 35, Georgia Tech and Florida are also below $40,000 (Florida is below $30,000).
@RichardMZhlubb We are only looking at top private schools in this thread, not large public ones. That can be discussed in another thread.
It’s not going to be a $50k differential. Unless kid finds very cheap off campus digs at a school and transportation costs are such. But that’s an individual thing.
@Riversider A quick google would turn up loads of news articles on the rising costs of college.
My suggestion would be to expand beyond this artificial boundary of the top 25. Which top 25, US News national universities? Are nationally-ranked LACs a possibility? Also explore the top colleges in the child’s major that may not be as highly-ranked overall; there may be some bargains to be found.
Prestige seems especially important for your search. Consider whether attending a prestigious grad school might be more cost-effective.